Veeam Backup & Replication Changelog

What's new in Veeam Backup & Replication 10.0.0.4461

May 12, 2020

Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) is a fully compliant and certified full-stack cloud infrastructure sold and supported by Google. You can deploy VMware vSphere-based workloads, natively, in a dedicated SDDC on Google Cloud and utilize the same applications, tools, processes, and policies that you use today. This environment requires specific preparations to allow Veeam Backup & Replication 10 or later to work with it. Except for the challenge listed below, you can interact with it in Veeam Backup & Replication like with any other vSphere environment to backup, restore, and replicate VM workloads.
GCVE uses standard VMware vSphere, vSAN, and NSX versions to operate the service. General compatibility is given for any Veeam Backup & Replication version that supports the vSphere version operated by GCVE.
Consider that Veeam has tested GCVE only with Backup & Replication v10 and, therefore, recommends to use this version or later.
The virtual lab creation wizard is affected due to the impossibility to select a network at the Networking step when using either the Basic single-host or Advanced single-host option.

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.4.2753 Update 4a (Mar 27, 2019)

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.4.2615 Update 4 (Jan 29, 2019)

Update 4 delivers full support for all recently shipped platform updates, including:
Microsoft Windows Server 2019
support as guest OS of virtual machines protected by Veeam Backup & Replication, for installation
Of Veeam Backup & Replication and all of its remote components, and for backup with Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Windows 10 October 2018 Update
support as guest OS of virtual machines protected by Veeam Backup & Replication,
Support as guest virtual machines, for installation of Veeam Backup & Replication and all of its remote components, and for backup
With Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V 2019
support as a hypervisor host, including support for virtual hardware version 9.0
Virtual machines:
Microsoft Active Directory 2019, Exchange 2019 and SharePoint 2019
support for application-aware processing, and for item-
Level recoveries with Veeam Explorer.
Oracle Database 18c
support for application-aware processing on Windows-based virtual machines, including transaction log backup
And point-in-time restores.
VMware vSphere 6.7 U1
ESXi, vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) support.
VMware vCloud Director 9.5
support.
In addition to the above-mentioned major features, as a result of on-going R&D efforts and in response to customer feedback, Update 4
Also includes hundreds of other enhancements, the most significant of which are listed below.
General:
App-aware processing
Added support for Kerberos-only authentication for vSphere VM application-aware processing. This enables IT to disable NTLM in VM
Guest networks to prevent pass-the-hash attacks in the virtual environments with less IT control.
SQL Server transaction logs and Oracle redo logs backup engine will now use the volume with most disk space as a staging location
For log backups, instead defaulting to C: drive which often does not have enough free disk space. On Linux, it now chooses the
Directory with most free spaces between /var/tmp and /tmp.
Oracle redo logs backup retention policy will now analyze the logs being removed in order to preserve Guaranteed Restore Points
(part of Oracle Flashback feature).
Added support for Oracle Data Guard deployments.
Engine:
Maximum supported individual disk size and backup file size have been increased over 10 times. With the default 1MB block size, the
New theoretical VBK format maximums are 120TB for each disk in backup, and 1PB for the total backup file size. Tested maximum is
100TB for both individual disks and backup files.
Reduced metadata size for backups without encryption by 10MB, benefiting minimum backup file size.
Optimized backup job initialization and finalization steps, resulting in up to 50% times faster backups of small VMs.
Image content publishing engine has been reworked for significantly faster file-level and item-level recovery.
Preferred Networks settings now also affect built-in WAN accelerators.
Linux:
Removed the requirement for adding NOPASSWD:ALL option to the sudoers file for the user account that you want to elevate to root.
Added support for !requiretty option enabled in the sudoers file, which is the default setting for some Linux distributions
(like CentOS).
© 2019 Veeam Software. Confidential information. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
01222019
Product Overview:
When registering a Linux server, you now have an option to failover to using “su” command for distros where “sudo” command
Is not available.
SSH fingerprint validation has been extended to all Linux server connections to protect against “man in the middle” (MITM) attacks
Through managed servers.
Reliability improvements in the PKI authentication logic.
Microsoft Azure
Support for Azure CSP subscriptions and Azure Government Cloud.
Ability to select network security group for the target Azure IaaS VM.
You can now specify Azure Active Directory users when connecting to your Azure account.
Microsoft Hyper-V:
Hyper-V VM groups can now be used to add VMs to backup and replication jobs.
Instant recovery of agent backups to a Hyper-V VM now support Windows 10 Hyper-V as the target hypervisor. This is particularly useful
For managed service providers by enabling them to create low-cost all-in-one BCDR appliances to deploy at their clients’ premises.
Microsoft ReFS
Added experimental support for block cloning on deduplicated files for Windows Server 2019 ReFS. To enable this functionality,
Create
ReFSDedupeBlockClone
(DWORD) value under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREVeeamVeeam Backup and Replication
Registry key on the backup server.
VMware vSphere
VPower NFS write cache performance has been improved by an order of magnitude, significantly improving I/O performance of
Instantly recovered VMs and making a better use of SSD drives often dedicated by customers to write cache.
VPower NFS scalability has been improved to more efficiently leverage expanded I/O capacity of scale-out backup repository for
Increased number of VMs that can be running concurrently.
Added hosts authorization by IP address to vPower NFS server (by default, only the ESXi host that provisioned vPower NFS datastore
Is able to access to it). To disable this functionality, create
VPowerNFSDisableIPAuth
registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SOFTWAREWOW6432NodeVeeamVeeam NFS on the mount server.
SureBackup jobs can now be configured to use vPower NFS cache (in addition to redirecting changes to vSphere datastore), which
Particularly enables support for using SureBackup against VMs with disks larger than 2TB in environments with only available
VSphere storage being VMware VSAN.
Support for Paravirtual SCSI controllers with more than 16 disks attached.
VSphere tags are now automatically moved by Quick Migration jobs, and preserved when performing Instant VM Recovery.
RESTful API
Added JSON support.
Added RESTful API coverage for viewing and managing agent-based jobs and their backups.
Setup

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.0.1536 Update 3 (Dec 19, 2017)

New features:
Built-in agent management:
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux can now be deployed and managed directly from the Veeam Backup & Replication console, adding support for physical and cloud workloads protection.
Maintain complete control of data protection for ALL your virtual, physical and cloud workloads by managing both hypervisor-based and agent-based backups natively through the Veeam Backup & Replication console.
Ensure no Windows or Linux computers are left unprotected by centrally deploying Veeam agents with automated host discovery via dynamic protection groups based on Active Directory containers, or CSV files exported from your existing CMDB system.
Protect Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clusters, such as SQL Server failover clusters and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups, with new agent-based failover cluster backup jobs – and transparently restore guest files and application items from cluster backups.
Insider protection for Veeam Cloud Connect:
Ensure the ability to recover your data following a cyber-attack by having your Veeam Cloud Connect service provider protect your data against insider attacks. Service providers can now enable protection of your backups against accidental or malicious deletion directly from the Veeam Backup & Replication console. These deletions are often executed either by hackers who have breached the tenant’s network perimeter and obtained powerful credentials with a brute force attack (with the intention of deploying ransomware on the production servers), or by disgruntled employees.
Data location tagging:
Ensure data sovereignty compliance required by various regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), by tagging production infrastructure and backup infrastructure objects with locations. Location tags are used to prevent accidental errors when configuring backup and replication jobs or performing out-of-place restores, by issuing a warning when an action may result in a data sovereignty violation and producing audit trails whenever such action is confirmed. Additionally, new Veeam ONE reports use location data to help you prove compliance.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize Integration:
Reduce the impact on production environments and achieve lower recovery time and point objectives through new storage snapshots integration for IBM Storwize, IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and any other IBM Spectrum Virtualize based storage system, such as Lenovo Storage V series or IBM/Cisco VersaStack.
Universal Storage Integration API:
The new storage array integration framework included in Veeam Backup & Replication starting with this update enables select storage partners to build integrations of their primary storage systems with advanced Veeam Backup & Replication functionality that leverages storage snapshots.
Platform support:
Microsoft Azure. Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure functionality has been updated to support 4TB virtual disks, Azure Germany and Azure China.
Microsoft SQL Server 2017 support for application-aware processing on Windows-based virtual machines, including transaction log backup and point-in-time restores; and as a backend configuration database for the Veeam Backup & Replication itself.
Microsoft Windows 10 Fall Creators Update support as guest virtual machines, and for installation of Veeam Backup & Replication and all of its components.
Microsoft Windows Server 1709 support as guest virtual machines, and for installation of Veeam Backup & Replication remote components.
Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V 1709 support as a hypervisor host, including support for virtual hardware version 8.2 virtual machines.
VMware Cloud on Amazon AWS support allows protecting VMs running in the cloud, and migrate or replicate workloads from on-prem vSphere deployment to VMC (and vice versa).
VMware vCloud Director 9.0 compatibility.
Storage support:
Cisco HyperFlex support of deployments with multiple HyperFlex clusters under a single vCenter Server.
DELL EMC Data Domain integration now supports Data Domain systems running DD OS 6.1
HPE 3PAR StoreServ integration has been extended to include snapshot-only backup jobs; ability to retain primary storage snapshots created by backup jobs with a different retention policy; and ability to perform backup from storage snapshots from secondary 3PAR array running in Peer Persistence mode.
Hyperconverged infrastructures (HCI) deployments can now leverage the new option to force the load balancer to use Direct NFS backup proxy located on the same vSphere host with the processed virtual machine, to avoid stressing storage replication network with backup traffic . To enable this functionality, create EnableSameHostDirectNFSMode (DWORD) value under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREVeeamVeeam Backup and Replication registry key on the backup server. The value is used to controls failover behavior when Direct NFS proxies if the proxy on same host is unavailable: 1 allows failover to other Direct NFS proxies, and 2 restricts failover to NBD only.
LTO-8 support for all tape-related functionality.
Backup Copy:
Backup mapping for agent backup files is now supported to enable scenarios such as backup seeding.
Restore from backup copies. When initiating a restore from local user interface, Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows and Veeam Agent for Linux will now provide the ability to pick a restore point stored in the secondary repository, should backup files in the primary repository be missing.
Hyper-V:
Hyper-V 2016 VMs with non-snapshottable disk such as disks connected via in-guest iSCSI initiator can now be processed by backup and replication jobs, with unsupported disks skipped and their content not included in a backup or replica. If you’d rather prefer the job to fail on such VMs (legacy behavior), create HyperVIgnoreNonSnapshottableDisks (DWORD) value under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREVeeamVeeam Backup and Replication registry key on the backup server.
Oracle:
New Oracle 12.2 account types support includes Microsoft Windows Group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA) and Microsoft Windows Virtual Accounts.
VMware:
VMDK resize operation will no longer result in resetting CBT data for all virtual machine disks, but rather for the resized disk only.
Non-encrypted NBD transport is again availble for vSphere 6.5, significantly improving backup and replication performance comparing to previously forced NBDSSL.

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5.0.1038 Update 2 (Jun 23, 2017)

Platform support:
Cisco HyperFlex Systems (formerly HX-Series/SpringPath) support for Backup from Storage Snapshots functionality.
HPE 3PAR StoreServ 3.3.1 support and improved scalability by migrating some API calls from SSH to RESTful API.
Microsoft Hyper-V BigEndian platform support.
Microsoft Exchange 2016 CU5 support for mailbox item recovery with Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange.
NetApp ONTAP 9.1 support.
Oracle 12.2 support for all Oracle database backup and restore functionality.
Veeam Agent for Linux 1.0 Update 1 (build 1.0.1.364) support, including new 1-Click FLR via Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager.
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0 (build 2.0.0.700) support, including application-item recovery support from agent backups.
VMware vCloud Director 8.20 support.
VMware vSAN 6.6 support.
File-level recovery:
Restore to original location. If the original VM cannot be found by moRef identifier (as is the case if it was deleted and then restored from backup), the Multi-OS File Level Recovery wizard will prompt the user to specify target VM manually instead of failing.
Replication:
Failback performance improvements. Failback can now optionally use changed block tracking data to determine the changes between the original VM and replica VM state. This dramatically accelerates the failback performance due removing the need to read the entire original VM disks (“Calculating original signature” operation). For VMware hypervisor, we recommend that this option is not used if the failover event was triggered by a disaster that involved host or storage crash or dirty shutdown, as CBT data may be inconsistent in this Case.
Storage integration:
Optional NFS exports creation. You can now prevent Veeam from automatically creating the required NFS export rules on the NetApp storage by clearing the “Create required NFS export rules automatically” in the New NetApp Storage wizard.
Performance improvements. The performance of Backup from Storage Snapshot with application-aware processing enabled has been noticeably improved.
Tape:
LTO7 path failover support. Added support for LTO7 tape libraries with path failover functionality enabled.
Exclusive drivers support. Added support for exclusive tape library drivers (on top of already supported non-exclusive drivers).
User interface:
VeeamZIP usability improvements. VeeamZIP menu item with the default location will not be shown until a user performs VeeamZIP for the first time, selecting the required destination during this process. After that, said menu item will appear, reflecting the previously selected location. This should prevent users from accidentally overfilling the default C:Backup VeeamZIP location.
ExaGrid preset. Changed the default concurrent tasks value from 1 to 10 per vendor's request.
PowerShell:
Start-VBRZip enhancements. Added NetworkCredentials parameter to Start-VBRZip cmdlet to enable automating backups to file shares.
Backup import enhancements. Added support for importing backups from DELL EMC Data Domain and HPE StoreOnce repositories.
Setup:
Components auto-update. Update setup now offers an option to initiate the upgrade of all remote Veeam component automatically. This covers all Veeam components except Network Extension Appliances (part of Veeam Cloud Connect Replication functionality)
Update performance. The number of concurrently updated remote components have been increased to 10 to reduce large backup environments update time, especially with high latency networks. This value can be further increased by creating MaxConcurrentComponentUpgrades (DWORD) registry value under HKLMSOFTWAREVeeamVeeam Backup and Replication key on the backup server.
Streamlined updates. Installing the update no longer requires to disabling all jobs and stopping Veeam services manually. However, you still have to ensure there’s no running backup or restore jobs before installing the update.
Veeam Cloud & Service Provider Partners:
Update 2 introduces Veeam Backup Remote Access functionality, scalability and reporting enhancements for Veeam Cloud Connect platform, and improved offline usage reporting. For the full list of service provider specific enhancements and bug fixes, please refer to the issue tracking topic in the private VCSP forum. If you are VCSP but don't have access, please apply to Cloud & Service Providers group using Veeam forum's User Control Panel.
This update also resolves the following common support issues:
Networkless restores for files above 10MB should no longer result in corrupted file restored.
Backup infrastructure resource scheduling algorithms have been improved to reduce job initialization delays in large infrastructures.
Shutting down or rebooting the backup server should now correctly stop all jobs.
Repository throttling rules should now correctly apply to Veeam Agent for Windows 2.0 synthetic full backups.
Instant VM Recovery should now be possible for VMs for which the original host is no longer registered with Veeam.
Fixed backup metadata resync issues caused by using storage-based replication or similar means of transferring backup files between Veeam backup repositories registered in the same backup server.
Improved SureBackup performance and domain controller (DC) recoverability testing logic. As a side effect, the recoverability testing for DCs backed up without application-aware processing will always fail (which however represents typical real-life recovery result from such a backup).
Improved Hyper-V 2016 RCT backup performance and off-host backup reliability.
Improved Direct NFS transport mode compatibility with Tintri storage.

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 9.0.0.902 (Mar 25, 2016)

NEW INNOVATIONS:
Scale-out Backup Repository:
Managing backup storage is an enormous and expensive effort for enterprises. This is largely due to the fact that the exponential rate of data growth is outpacing the ability of legacy solutions to manage it in efficient, cost-effective ways.
Veeam’s new Scale-out Backup Repository addresses this challenge by lowering backup storage hardware spending and significantly simplifying backup storage
management in the enterprise. With this new capability, enterprises will be able to
Dramatically simplify backup storage and backup job management through a single, software-defined backup repository encompassing multiple heterogeneous storage devices. Reduce storage hardware spending by allowing existing backup storage investments to be fully leveraged, eliminating the problem of underutilized storage devices. Improve backup performance allowing for lower RPOs and reduced risk of data loss in daily operations.
BitLooker:
BitLooker is Veeam’s unique, patent-pending, advanced data-reduction technology designed to further reduce backup file size and replication bandwidth usage by 20% or more. It allows customers to remove useless chunks of data congesting their backup storage and network resources by providing the following three capabilities:
Excluding deleted file blocks
Excluding swap and hibernation files
Excluding user-specified files and folders
Note for users upgrading from previous versions: By default, BitLooker will be enabled for newly created jobs upon upgrade. However, it will not be automatically enabled on existing jobs to ensure the jobs do not change existing behaviors. BitLooker can be enabled manually in the advanced job settings or by using a PowerShell script.
PRIMARY STORAGE INTEGRATIONS:
Integration with EMC snapshots
Backup from NetApp SnapMirror and SnapVault:
On-Demand Sandbox for Storage Snapshots
Direct NFS Access
BACKUP STORAGE INTEGRATIONS:
HPE StoreOnce Catalyst
Updated EMC Data Domain support
Enhanced support for any deduplication appliance
ENTERPRISE ENHANCEMENTS:
Standalone console
Remote Office/Branch Office enhancements
Tape enhancements
VEEAM EXPLORERS:
Veeam Explorer for Oracle
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint
VEEAM CLOUD CONNECT:
Veeam Cloud Connect Replication. Ensure Availability of your mission-critical applications without the cost and complexity of building and maintaining a disaster recovery (DR) site. Veeam Cloud Connect Replication provides fully
integrated, fast and secure cloud-based DR through a service provider.
ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS:
Engine:
Improved scalability. Multiple engine optimizations, smarter configuration database interaction, new reduced logging mode and per-VM backup file chains now enable users to utilize a single job to back up their entire environment. Version 9 has been tested with 5,000 VMs per job with per-VM backup file chains enabled, allowing even the largest customers to move from job-based to policy-based protection paradigm.
Increased job concurrency. Version 9 provides improved backup server stability when running over 100 jobs concurrently. It’s important to keep per-job memory requirements in mind when opting to start this many multiple jobs at once
Transform performance improvements. Multiple optimizations have been included in v9 to increase the speed of full backup file transformation (incremental backup file merge and synthetic full creation), by caching a portion of the metadata in memory, as well as removing delays caused by metadata processing. Additionally, with per-VM backup file chains enabled,
transform will now be performed on multiple VMs in parallel, if repository task slots will allow
vPower cache. vPower engine will now cache recently accessed backup file blocks in RAM, which will help speed up all functionality that relies on Instant VM Recovery
Built-in WAN acceleration enhancements. Improved reliability of algorithms handling a temporary loss of network connectivity. Reduced source WAN accelerator RAM consumption up to 20x for certain operations, such as transfer resume
Backup copy enhancements. Improved VM configuration files processing performance, which should significantly reduce incremental backup copy window. Improved backup re-compression performance (when backup copy job is configured to change original backup’s compression level), and added support for re-compressing encrypted backups
Backup import performance. Improved performance of importing the backup files chain with missing VBM file up to 50x
Configuration database maintenance job. A system job has been added that will periodically optimize configuration databases, including updating its statistics and defragmenting indices
Local 16TB+. The storage optimization settings have been changed to utilize 4MB block size from 8MB) to improve performance of all recovery types involving random I/O
GENERAL:
Storage-level corruption guard. Backup files produced by primary backup jobs can now be periodically scanned to identify storage issues, such as a bit rot. Corrupt data blocks are auto-healed by retrieving correct data from the production storage, increasing the reliability of forever-incremental backups and removing the need for periodic full backups
Full backup file defragmentation and compaction. Decrease the size and fragmentation of full backup files produced by forever-incremental primary backup jobs by recreating backup files periodically based on the actual data, while moving obsolete data into the dedicated files which can be manually deleted or archived as necessary. This functionality lets you remove the data associated with deleted VMs, virtual disks or applications from full backup file without having to perform an active full backup
Backup copy parallel processing. With v9, backup copy jobs will now process multiple VMs in parallel, just like primary backup jobs. This improves the backup copy and retention processing performance due to removing “dead time” between each VM, and will further speed up processing when per-VM backup file chains are enabled on the target backup repository
Ability to stop jobs gracefully. Users now have the choice to stop the job gracefully (as soon as it is done processing all VMs already being processed), in addition to killing them immediately and leaving unusable restore points for such VMs (existing behavior)
Ability to manually trigger Active Full in backup copy jobs. This added feature
can be useful when changing backup storage settings (encryption or block size), as well as for troubleshooting
Per-VM licensing. Service providers will now be provided per-VM license files, as opposed to per-socket license files, making it easier to track and report actual consumption
VEEAM CLOUD CONNECT:
Built-in WAN acceleration. In addition to being included in the Enterprise Plus edition, this feature is now also included in the Enterprise edition for backup copy and replication jobs to Veeam Cloud Connect service providers
Tenant bandwidth throttling. Added the ability for users to limit the maximum bandwidth consumption by each tenant on the service provider site to help protect all tenants using the same Cloud Gateway from a "noisy neighbor" problem
Self-signed certificate improvements. Added the ability to generate self-signed certificates for service providers with company names that include special characters
Logging enhancements. Switching the logging level for cloud service no longer requires the service to be restarted, to ensure troubleshooting can be performed without impacting tenant jobs
PRIMARY STORAGE INTEGRATION:
Limit processed VM count. The ability to limit processed VM count per storage snapshot was added to enable users to reduce the amount of time each VM runs off snapshots when there are a large number of VMs that need processed from the same storage snapshot with application-aware processing enabled
Single snapshot clone. Multi-VM restores from the same storage snapshot will now leverage a single snapshot clone, as opposed to creating a separate clone per VM. This reduces recovery times and adds support for Environments lacking multiple snapshot clones capability, or the corresponding storage license
Increased NFS client performance. Backup performance from NetApp NFS volumes has been vastly improved by introducing multi-threading and CBT read-ahead into the proprietary NFS client. To reduce the primary storage load and time VMs run off snapshots, the NetApp SnapMirror/SnapVault relationship will now be triggered only after VM snapshots have been
removed, instead of immediately
Cascaded NFS policies support. Required entries are now set automatically
on all NetApp storage policies. The number of snapshot copies to retain. You can now set the number of snapshot copies to retain to zero, so that all storage snapshots, except the base one, are removed from NetApp SnapVault immediately after a backup from storage snapshots has been performed on secondary storage. To avoid confusion, this setting has also been removed from the NetApp SnapMirror Retention dialog.
VMWARE VSPHERE:
vCloud Director 8.0. Added support for vCloud Director 8.0 in all related functionality
VM tags backup and restore. VM tags are now backed up along with all of the other VM properties, and the full VM restore wizard provides a new option to restore them
Improved Direct SAN restore performance. Based on user feedback, the Direct SAN restore process will now create eager zeroed disks (as opposed to lazy zeroed), since this was found to improve full VM restore performance in most cases. To reverse this change, create the EagerZeroedDiskRestore
(DWORD) = 0 registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key
MICROSOFT HYPER-V:
Performance optimizations. Building VM list job stage have been accelerated up to 10x for the initial job run, and up to 25x for the retry job run in large environments. Cluster rescan performance has been improved proportionally to the amount of hosts in the cluster
SCVMM tags support. Added the ability to configure jobs by adding Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) tags as a container object
Disk space monitor. To prevent production VMs from stopping due to a volume overfilling with snapshot data, jobs will now detect the lack of free disk space on a VM volume, and fail immediately. The default threshold of 2 GB of free disk space can be changed by creating the BlockSnapshotThreshold DWORD) registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key
Enhanced SMB3 storage support. Replicating to a target SMB3 storage no longer requires customizing Constrained Delegation policy on the domain controller
APPLICATION-AWARE PROCESSING:
SQL Server database labeling. Per Microsoft recommendations, a backup job now registers a SQL Server database backup by putting the corresponding record in the system.db system table of each SQL Server database
FILE-LEVEL RECOVERY:
Engine optimizations. Multiple under-the-hood improvements are designed to significantly speed up both Windows and Linux FLR initialization and actual recovery performance
Session improvements. FLR session statistics now include status icons reflecting restore result, as well as the target path information on the Statistics tab
SNMP traps improvements. SNMP traps now contain information about files and folders that failed to be restored
ENTERPRISE MANAGER:
Single sign-on. Added the ability to use native Windows Authentication in Active Directory environments. As a result, users logging on to the Enterprise Manager web UI using a supported browser should no longer be asked to supply unique credentials, as their Windows session credentials will be used. If it is necessary to logon as a different user, simply click Log off and enter the required credentials
1-Click FLR without indexing. You can now perform 1-Click FLR on restore points without the guest file system index present by selecting the required restore point and browsing the guest file system directly in the Enterprise Manager web UI
Restrict in-place SQL Server database restore. In v9, a new restore scope option has been added that restricts restoring databases back to the original location to protect SQL developers from accidentally restoring a database over a healthy production database. Restoring databases to any other SQL Server, such as in a dev environment, is still possible when this option is selected
SUREBACKUP:
Script credentials. Added the ability to customize credentials to run the SureBackup application test script under
UI:
Multi-user support. Backup administrators will now be warned of conflicting edits when attempting to save changes after editing the same job concurrently
Missing backup files pruning. By popular demand, the backup properties dialog now shows missing backup files and with only a few clicks allows users to easily remove these files, as well as backup files that are dependent on missing files
Backup copies are now shown in a separate node under Backups > Disk (copy) node to help easily distinguish between primary backups, and their copies
VeeamZIP backups are now registered in the configuration database and shown under Backups > Disk (VeeamZIP node to more easily track them)
Location column has been added to the Backup node’s grid, showing the corresponding backup’s location, such as local path, backup repository, replica host or storage snapshot
Real-time job statistics window is now resizable
Filter displayed events by status. Real-time statistics window for database log backup job now allows to easily see only events with a certain status (for example, only errors).
Infrastructure cache. To remove the wait time for virtual infrastructure objects to be loaded, the user interface now uses an infrastructure cache in certain places, such as in the Backup Job wizards and in the Virtual Machines tab. The default cache expiration time of 15 minutes can be changed by creating the InfrastructureCacheExpirationSec DWORD) registry value under
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key
Modern UI. The Veeam Backup & Replication console UI has been refreshed to a more modern look (We hope you like it!)
POWERSHELL;
Remote PowerShell. Standalone console allows you to use PowerShell against backup server remotely, without relying on PowerShell Remoting.
SQL Server restore. Cmdlets to script SQL Server database restores have been added.
RESTful API:
RESTful API for Service Providers. By popular demand, RESTful API is now available in all product editions when per-VM license is installed
SETUP:
Support for non-English locales
Added support for some non-English locales which caused setup to previously fail

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 8.0.0.817 (May 14, 2015)

Backup from Storage Snapshots and Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots – now available for NetApp:
Veeam’s storage snapshot integration technologies have been extended to support NetApp storage. Achieve an unprecedented level of data protection through a combination of NetApp’s low recovery point objective (RPO) capabilities and Veeam’s low recovery time objective (RTO) enablement. NetApp integration supports NFS, FC and iSCSI connectivity, and both 7-mode and cluster-mode deployment options. All Data ONTAP storage is supported, including NetApp FAS, FlexArray (V-Series), Edge VSA and IBM N Series.
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory:
New Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory makes item-level recovery
with Active Directory easier than ever by providing the following simple and
powerful functionality:
Instantly restore individual Active Directory (AD) object attributes, objects and
entire containers
Recover user and computer account passwords to avoid disruptions
Perform 1-click compare between backed up and production Active Directory states on both object and object attribute levels
Easily search for objects and attributes in the backed-up AD; includes plain text- and advanced LDAP filter-based search capabilities
Export selected objects from backed-up AD state into LDIFDE format
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server:
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server enables you to achieve low RTOs and RPOs with Microsoft SQL Server database protection with the following all-new functionality:
1-click individual SQL database recovery for lowest RTO; no more searching for database files or spending time reattaching them to SQL server using native management tools.
Web-based restore portal for SQL database restores by delegated database administrators
Agentless transaction log backup and replay for no-impact, low RPO protection of your SQL databases.
Back up your databases as often as every five minutes!
Point-in-time SQL database recovery down to individual transactions with the unique transaction logs
viewer to ensure lowest possible RPOs
Full support for SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups for both backup and restore
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange:
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange brings additional functionality, making granular Exchange restores easier and more efficient than ever. New features include:
Web-based restore portal for delegated help desk operators enables secure mailbox items recoveries
without restore operators having access to the content of restored items
Ability to recover hard-deleted items that you thought might have been lost forever
Support for searching of and recovering to Online Archive mailboxes
Restore of Public Folder permissions (in addition to Public Folder contents)
Support for item-level recovery from secondary (passive) DAG node backups
EMC Data Domain Boost:
With EMC Data Domain Boost (DDBoost), you get source-side data deduplication, yielding faster, more efficient backups that enable lower RPOs and lower exposure to data loss. The benefits of combining the Veeam Backup & Replication with EMC Data Domain Boost include:
Up to 50% faster backup performance with advanced source-side deduplication by DDBoost
10x faster in-place synthetic full backup file creation and transformation for dramatically shorter backup windows
Fibre Channel (FC) connectivity enables LAN-free backup to Data Domain
DDOS 5.4 or later and DDBoost license from EMC required.
End-to-end encryption:
With Veeam’s built-in AES 256-bit encryption you can secure your data end to end:
At source (backup file encryption via backup proxy)
In flight (network traffic encryption for replication and quick migration)
At rest (via “at source” encryption, or using tape encryption)
Unique password loss protection enables IT managers to maintain the ability to recover backups even if the passwords set on backups by your IT staff are lost, all without compromising security.
More importantly, because all Veeam technologies are tightly integrated, backup encryption does not impact the data reduction ratios of built-in compression and WAN Acceleration, as is the case when using third-party bandwidth reduction solutions.
Replication enhancements - improve offsite backup and recovery with additional replication enhancements from Veeam, allowing you to:
Reduce the impact on your WAN link with
Built-in WAN Acceleration for replication resulting in up to 50x faster replication over slow links, and up to 20x reduction in bandwidth consumption on fast links
Reduce the impact on primary storage with replication from backup files
and replication from NetApp storage snapshots
Lower failover complexity with new Failover Plans providing built-in orchestration for easy 1-click entire-site failover
Lower RTOs and ensure zero data loss with Planned Failover functionality designed to facilitate data center migrations using replication jobs
Reduce the time difference between replicated states when replicating a group of VMs by processing retention policy at the end of the replication job for all VMs, as opposed to doing this after each replicated VM
Eliminate bandwidth loss on network disconnects with true resume
of data transfer upon network disconnects; available for both standard and WAN-accelerated replication jobs
Veeam Cloud Connect:
Avoid the risk of catastrophic data loss in case of a site disaster through hosted backup repositories with Veeam Cloud Connect. It’s the easy, efficient way to get backups off site to a service provider through:
Hosted offsite backups - Get your backups off site to a cloud repository hosted by the service provider of your choice through a single port over a secure connection protected by SSL authentication and network traffic encryption.
Complete visibility and control - Access hosted backup repository content and perform recoveries directly from a cloud repository—no need to copy backup files locally first!
Modern backup architecture - Leverage Built-in WAN Acceleration, forever incremental backups, Backup Copy jobs, GFS retention and MORE with cloud repositories, just as if they were your local backup repositories.
Veeam Cloud Connect also gives service providers an easy way to host offsite backups for Veeam customers by providing:
Cloud gateways - Virtualize all traffic between the customer and service provider across SSL—no need for VPN; deploy multiple cloud gateways to enable high availability (HA) and automatic load balancing.
Multi-tenant support - Segment a single backup repository into multiple cloud repositories, and manage resource allocations and expiration dates for each tenant.
Service provider licensing - Monthly subscription-based, per-VM licensing with no upfront investment or commitment.
Service provider lookup - Web portal where Veeam customers and resellers can find YOU!
Backup I/O Control:
Backup I/O Control ensures your workload’s availability by reducing the impact of backup and replication jobs on production VMs running on the same storage where backed-up VMs reside by monitoring the production datastore read latency and controlling job I/O to keep the latency within user-defined, acceptable limits. This ensures availability of production workloads during the backup window without unnecessarily sacrificing backup job performance when the datastore load is low (as is often the case with legacy solutions offering static per-datastore task limits).
Backup I/O Control works in conjunction with Automatic Intelligent Load Balancing to ensure no new I/O-intensive tasks (such as virtual disk backup, restore or snapshot removal) are assigned to the same datastore if the datastore’s latency is above a user-defined first latency threshold.
Additionally, Backup I/O Control actively throttles Data Mover I/O for existing tasks if the production datastore’s latency goes above a user-defined second latency threshold (e.g., due to a production VM starting to execute an I/O intensive operation).
To ensure that backups can complete under any circumstances, Backup I/O Control will always allow at least one active task per datastore, and will never throttle any given task to less than 10% of full I/O capacity.
Self-restore portal for application owners:
Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager v8 includes a new, dedicated self-service, file-level restore portal for application owners. The portal will automatically detect what VM the user logs on from, find the given VM backup, and check if the user was a member of a Local Administrators group on the given VM at the time when the backup was executed. If this is the case, the user is immediately provided with the ability to browse, search and restore files and folders from the latest restore point of this VM or select another restore point if necessary.
The self-restore portal simplifies restores for application owners, as they no longer have to guess the VM name of the server from which they need to restore files (and thus increase their restore times). Since delegation is fully automated and leverages the existing Microsoft Windows permissions already in place, the portal also reduces TCO by eliminating the need for portal administrators to constantly tweak the restore delegation settings as new VMs are added to the environment, or new users requiring privileges to be granted for performing file-level restores.
150+ additional enhancements:
As a result of ongoing research and development efforts and in response to customer feedback, Veeam Backup & Replication v8 includes an extensive range of additional features and enhancements, the most significant of which are listed below.
GENERAL:
Forever forward incremental backup mode - This new, default backup mode for primary backup jobs creates forward incremental backups for all the following runs after the initial full backup, which always remains the oldest restore point in a full backup chain. When the retention policy needs to remove the oldest restore point, the job merges the oldest incremental backup into the full backup file, discarding any data replaced in the full backup file by this process. This is identical to how Backup Copy jobs store
the backup files. Because forward incremental backup creation involves mostly sequential write I/O, the forever forward incremental backup mode reduces the time a VM runs off of a snapshot by up to 3x when compared
to the reverse incremental backup mode. This prevents a VM snapshot from growing large and making its commit much faster, thus reducing both backup window and load on production storage.
Quick rollback - When restoring an entire VM, the new quick rollback option can be used to restore only the data blocks known to be changed since the last backup was taken. This option is not selected by default, and should only be enabled in case of application-level issues. This option should not
be used in scenarios with storage corruption or power loss, because CBT data cannot be trusted in such cases, which is why the entire VM restore is highly recommended. However, quick rollback can significantly improve RTOs in disaster scenarios that were not caused by hardware problems.
Certificate-based authentication - Support for certificate-based authentication for Linux servers used as backup repositories, and for the guest OS for application-aware processing and guest file system indexing has been added. Supported SSH keys formats include: OpenSSH RSA, OpenSSH DSA,
OpenSSL PEM, Open SSL PKCS#8, SSH.com and Putty Private Key (PPK).
Native SQL authentication - Native Microsoft SQL Server authentication is now supported for the configuration database. When native authentication is used, Veeam Backup & Replication user interface users are no longer required to have configuration database owner privileges.
Pre-job script - In addition to the existing post-job script, backup and replication jobs can now be configured to run pre-job scripts, for example to stop certain VMs before backup, using a PowerCLI script to ensure cold backup.
Job script enhancements - Both pre- and post-job scripts are now executed as a part of the job, instead of being launched in a separate, unmonitored process. This allows us to reflect script execution results depending on the exit code) right in the job status. The default script execution timeout of 900 sec (15 minutes) can be changed with the PreJobScriptTimeoutSec
DWORD) and PostJobScriptTimeoutSec DWORD) registry values under the
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key.
Update notification - Veeam Backup & Replication can now optionally notify users about new updates that are available by checking the current version against the Veeam website. This includes updates for Veeam Backup & Replication, as well as critical Microsoft Hyper-V updates and patches. When the backup server does not have an Internet connection, an updated
vbrupdate.vdf definition file can be downloaded and copied to C:\ProgramData\Veeam\ manually, replacing the existing file.
ENGINE:
Preferred networks selection - Enables the selection of preferred networks for multi-homed backup proxy and backup repository servers. This helps to ensure the backup and replication traffic is transferred over dedicated backup networks, without impacting the production network.
Multi-streaming of restores - Veeam Data Movers now leverage multiple TCP/IP streams when performing restores, in addition to backups. This helps to improve performance by more fully leveraging available network bandwidth of high latency links.
Concurrent jobs - The limit of 100 concurrent jobs has been removed to allow running even more jobs at once.
Parallel processing for host discovery - Infrastructure rescan now scans multiple hosts and servers at once, thus dramatically improving operations such as registering large virtual infrastructures.
Infrastructure rescan - The default infrastructure scanning period was changed from 24 hours to four hours to be able to detect any virtual environment or storage changes faster, thus preventing failed jobs.
AUTOMATIC INTELLIGENT LOAD BALANCING:
Job start time priority - The backup infrastructure resource scheduler will now prioritize all jobs according to their start times, and attempt to finish any particular job as soon as possible once it has been started. This means that if you start multiple jobs at once, the scheduler will assign newly appearing processing resources to the job that started earlier, as opposed to assigning them between all running jobs. This approach ensures that the backed-up state of all VMs within the same job remains as close together as possible.
Retry cycle priority - The retry cycle inherits the priority of the job it belongs to, as opposed to getting the same priority as other running jobs.
Periodic job priority - The resource scheduler will now give highest priority to jobs scheduled to run periodically over daily and monthly jobs to ensure required RPOs are being met.
Snapshot removal priority - Pending snapshot removal tasks get highest priority among all other tasks in the event that Backup I/O Control starts restricting task assignment to a certain datastore.
Backup window enforcement - Activities isolated to backup repositories, such as full backup transformation, should no longer be affected by the backup window setting.
Periodic jobs improvements - Scheduled, periodic jobs will now have more predictable start time behavior upon reaching their defined time periods, which have been limited to factors of 24 hours (i.e.,1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24).
APPLICATION-AWARE PROCESSING:
Custom pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts - You can now specify custom pre-freeze and post-thaw scripts for both Windows and Linux in the advanced application-aware processing settings to prepare applications requiring custom processing for backup, which completely removes the hurdle of deploying and updating said VMware Tools scripts in vSphere and brings this otherwise missing functionality to Hyper-V.
Copy-only VSS processing - Application-aware processing can now be configured to perform “copy-only” backups, which allows application-onsistent images to be created without touching transaction logs. This can be required if transaction logs are processed with a third-party application.
Microsoft Exchange VSS improvements - If standard VSS processing of a Microsoft Exchange Server times out, the job will retry processing using persistent in-guest VSS snapshot, which should prevent VSS processing timeouts commonly observed with Microsoft Exchange 2010. Persistent snapshots are removed from the production VMs once backups are finished. All VM, file-level and item-level restore options have been enhanced to detect and properly handle restores from Exchange backups created with the help of persistent VSS snapshots.
Oracle VSS improvements - Oracle databases that do not meet the requirements for successful VSS processing are automatically excluded from application-aware processing to avoid job failures.
Guest logging improvements - Improved guest logging significantly reduces disk space consumption in the guest OS. This should prevent situations with guests running out of disk space on the system volume due to too many logs being created
GUEST FILE SYSTEM INDEXING:
Parallel indexing - Guest file system indexing is now performed in parallel with virtual disk data backup, as opposed to holding backups until indexing finishes.
Linux indexing - Support for Linux guest file system indexing has been added. This feature requires that the Linux server has mlocate (which is standard for the vast majority of Linux distributions).
NTFS indexing improvements - NTFS indexing logic has been redesigned for up to 10x better indexing performance on file servers with large amount of files.
ReFS indexing improvements - ReFS indexing logic has been optimized for over 2x better indexing performance.
Indexing from VSS snapshots - The indexing will now be performed from a VSS snapshot to make the catalog more precisely reflect the backed-up state in cases where the guest OS supports Microsoft VSS.
Indexing priority - The indexing process now runs with a lower priority to reduce impact from its CPU consumption on existing applications running on the backed-up VM.
INSTANT FILE-LEVEL RECOVERY:
Overwrite/keep options - When restoring to the original location, users performing restores can now choose whether the original file should be overwritten or renamed and preserved. This functionality is available in both Windows UI and Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web UI.
Enhanced LVM support - Logical volume names are now fetched from the LVM configuration and displayed to the user, as opposed to showing /dev/mapper device names (dm0...dmN) to help users find the location of the files they need to restore more easily.
Solaris UFS support - Support for Solaris UFS to multi-OS file level-recovery wizard has been added.
Extended ZFS version support - ZFS pools are now supported up to version 5000. Note that ZFS pools from proprietary Oracle Solaris distributions are still not supported due to Oracle licensing limitations.
Improved performance - Windows file-level recovery performance was increased for scenarios in which multiple files are being restored over the network or locally to a backup server. Performance improvements should be especially noticeable when the backup server is protected with antivirus
software with real-time scanning enabled.
Inactive IFLR session shutdown - After 30 minutes of inactivity, an Instant File-Level Recovery IFLR) session will be considered abandoned, and will be automatically closed after displaying the corresponding warning. This will remove the locks from backup files and prevent potential failures of daily backups.
Volume quantity limit removed - The maximum of 20 mounted volumes limit has been removed from the native file-level recovery engine. This engine is leveraged for both file and item recovery, so the change should help with item-level recovery scenarios from application servers with large amount
of volumes hosting application databases.
4K native disk support - File-level recovery is now supported from native 4 KB formatted disk with. This requires switching the IFLR engine to an alternative mounter. To enable one, create the EnableHvVDKDWORD) = 0 registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key
VMware vSphere:
Snapshot Hunter - Detects and automatically consolidates hidden VM snapshots to prevent production VMs from stopping due to datastores overfilling with snapshot files. To detect hidden snapshots before exiting, and in addition for checking “Consolidation Needed” VM status, the jobs will physically scan datastores for snapshot files belonging to snapshots not registered in vSphere. If hidden snapshots are found, the job will attempt to automatically consolidate them by following the procedure described in Mware support KB article KB1002310. If the job fails to remove hidden snapshots due to snapshot files being locked, the job will log an informational event and exit, however a background system process will attempt to perform consolidation three more times every four hours in the hope that file locks will be removed. If these attempts fail too, Snapshot Hunter will stop trying, and a warning email will be sent to the global notification recipients urging them to take manual action.
Direct SAN restore - This enables thick virtual disk restore directly through the SAN fabric for faster performance and no impact on the production network. Using thick disks is common among users who choose to do thin-provisioning on a storage level. This functionality is explicitly disabled for thin disks, because it impacts vCenter Server and does not provide acceptable performance due to vSphere storage architecture. We recommend using hot add for fast restore of VMs with thin disks.
Hot add improvements - Backup proxies can now process multiple virtual disks of the same VM in parallel using hot add. This includes hot add backup, restore and replication (on both source and target proxy). Additionally, performance of said operations can see an increase of up to a few times depending on the environment.
Tag-based job population - Jobs can now be populated using VM tags as the dynamic selection scope. This provides incredible flexibility around job management. Consider using Veeam Business View (part of Veeam Availability Suite v8) to automate the assignment of tags to newly created VMs in your environment based on pre-defined rules.
Tag backup and restore - VM tags are now backed up and restored when restoring VMs back to the original location.
Datastore cluster-based job population - Jobs can now be populated using Datastore clusters as the dynamic VM selection scope. This job population method gives greater predictability of job size compared to other methods.
Datastore cluster support - Datastore clusters can now be selected as the target for restore or replication. The actual VM placement will be determined by the restore or replication job automatically by querying DRS recommendations at VM creation time
Append to VM attribute - Instead of overwriting the existing contents of a selected VM attribute (such as VM Notes) with the last backup status string, last VM backup information can now be optionally appended to the current attribute’s value. (Shout out to Michael White for this one – we appreciate
your continuous support!)
Support for vSphere Flash Read Cache - Restore jobs and replication jobs will now correctly configure VMs when restoring or replicating to target hosts without SSD storage installed
Building VMs list optimization - The performance of the Building VMs list job operation was enhanced by optimizing virtual infrastructure data queries
Snapshot release improvements - VM snapshot interaction logic in corner cases (such as job hangs and crashes) has been reworked to reduce the chance of snapshot files being locked by data movers that may still be running, thus preventing potential snapshot removal issues
Backup server connectivity - The backup server no longer requires connection to source and target ESX(i) host on port 902, as the operation requiring this connection is now performed by the source and target backup proxies respectively. This requirement was causing issues in environments with high
network isolation, such as in service provider environments.
Microsoft Hyper-V:
Shared VHDX support - Backup jobs can now back up shared VHDX virtual disks in a crash-consistent state. The full VM restore wizard has also been enhanced to account for shared VHDX restore specifics.
Consistency groups - Jobs can now process more than one VM from the volume snapshot at a time instead of creating a separate volume snapshot for each processed VM. For reliability reasons caused by Hyper-V backup architecture, the maximum amount of VMs is limited to four per snapshot by default in case of software VSS, and eight per snapshot in case of hardware VSS, but can be increased on fast primary storage with the MaxVmCountOnHvSoftSnapshot DWORD) and MaxVmCountOnHvHardSnapshot DWORD) registry values under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam\Backup and Replication key.
Volume-based job population - Jobs can now be populated using volumes as dynamic VM selection scope.
Checkpoint-based replicas - Replica restore points are now stored as VM checkpoints for faster recovery to any replica restore point, better reliability and the ability to power on any required restore point manually if required.
VLAN ID support - SureBackup network mapping rules for production networks and multi-OS file-level recovery helper appliance configurations now support pointing to specific VLANs in a multi-VLAN environment.
VSS failover control - Failover from hardware-based VSS snapshots to software-based VSS snapshots has been made optional in order to prevent undesired usage of software-based VSS snapshots when a hardware-based snapshot fails.
Hyper-V resource pool support - Hyper-V resource pool settings are now preserved when restoring VM backups to their original location, and are automatically removed when restoring a VM to a different location.
Smart Paging File support - The Smart Paging File location can now be customized in replication jobs to control the file’s placement on the target host, thus preventing potential issues upon failover.
CBT driver certification - The proprietary changed block tracking (CBT ) driver has passed Microsoft Windows Hardware Certification testing for Windows Server 2012 R2.
CBT driver improvements - Optimizations to further reduce the CBT driver’s CPU consumption have been added.
Bitlocker support - Support for CBT on CSV volumes encrypted with Bitlocker has been added.
Differencing VHDX improvements - Backup and replication performance has been improved significantly for differencing virtual disks, especially for VMs running on Windows Server 2012 R2.
BUILT-IN WAN ACCELERATION:
Performance improvements - Data processing performance has been improved up to 3x compared to v7 with the latest patch. The enhanced data processing engine includes additional optimizations specifically aimed to better leverage faster CPUs and SSD cache.
Cache optimizations - The WAN accelerator cache will now consume the entire allocated space immediately upon creation to prevent fragmentation and avoid unexpected lack of disk space issues at a later time as the cache grows.
Cache management - The WAN accelerator cache population can now be triggered without having to run the job by selecting one or more backup repositories to crawl for OS data. Cache reset was also made available directly in the user interface for troubleshooting purposes.
ROTATED DRIVES:
Rotated drives functionality can now be enabled with a checkbox in the advanced backup repository settings, as opposed to being controlled by registry settings (which are still supported for upgrade compatibility reasons). Additionally, when a backup repository backed by rotated drives is running on the Windows server, the following additional functionality is supported:
Intelligent cleanup - When a rotated drive that was used during previous cycles is attached, the backup job will only delete backup files if they are no longer under retention policy. This prevents unwanted deletion of backup files still under retention due to accidentally attaching an incorrect rotated drive.
Drive letter tracking - Backup jobs will now track rotated drives, and will follow them without failing even when the drive letter changes. Drive letters may change when adding new volumes or adding additional storage hardware, such as CD-ROM.
TAPE:
Remote tape server - This enables leveraging tape libraries and standalone drives connected to any Windows server in the environment, as opposed to the requirement of attaching them directly to the backup server. Adding multiple tape devices connected to different servers is supported.
Extended backup modes support - Backup to Tape jobs now support backup jobs using backup modes without periodic full backups as the source. For such jobs, on the full backup day, Backup to Tape jobs will synthesize the full backup file on the fly, using data from source backup files on disk. The synthesized full backup file will be compatible with the following incremental backup files created by the primary backup job.
Backup Copy job support - Backup to Tape can now leverage Backup Copy jobs as the source.
Performance enhancements - The performance of File to Tape backup has been increased up to 50x when backing up workloads consisting of a large number of small files. Performance of backing up large files should see minor improvement as well.
Media Vault - Enables tracking the physical tape medium location, such as storage shelves or offsite locations. Tape mediums are automatically assigned to the specified vault as they go offline (removed from tape library). Different media vaults can be specified for each media pull.
Software overwrite protection - Enables the ability to protect certain tape mediums from being overwritten according to the data retention policy. This functionality can be useful in certain situations, such as legal hold.
Media pool retention - Changing the retention policy on existing media pools is now supported.
Job scripts - File to Tape and Backup to Tape jobs now allow configuring pre- and post-job scripts to perform auxiliary actions with the tape library.
Granular email notification - File to Tape and Backup to Tape jobs now allow setting up per-job email notification recipients and settings.
Catalog auto-refresh - The tape catalog is now subscribed to change notification from all jobs, and performs automatic granular refresh as required (e.g., when a new tape backup is created).
Tape library rename - Tape libraries and tape drives can now be renamed in the user interface, in cases when the native name supplied by the driver is unreadable.
Last chain backup - When creating a new Backup to Tape job that uses an existing backup job as the source, and that has multiple full backup chains already created, users can choose whether all backup files, or only the latest full backup chain files, should be copied to tape.
Job timeouts - Tape backup and restore jobs will now time out and fail after 72 hours of waiting for user interaction (e.g., inserting tape), as opposed to waiting for user action forever and not reporting any issues.
Amazon Storage Gateway support - Added support for AWS Storage Gateway in virtual tape library VTL) configuration for seamless tape-like backup Experience to Amazon S3 and Amazon Glacier - Requires AWS Storage Gateway version 23-Oct-2014 or later and using Sony TSL-A500C Autoloader
medium changer emulation
PRIMARY STORAGE INTEGRATION:
HP 3PAR StoreServ iSCSI support - Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots and Backup from Storage Snapshots are now supported for HP 3PAR StoreServ with iSCSI connectivity.
Processing failover - Jobs using Backup from Storage Snapshots can now be set to automatically fail over to standard vStorage API-based backup, should primary storage integration fail. The failover is disabled by default to prevent unexpected impact on primary storage when Backup from Storage Snapshots suddenly becomes impossible, but it can be enabled manually if desired.
BACKUP STORAGE INTEGRATION:
In addition to EMC Data Domain integration described earlier, v8 integrates with the following deduplicating storage:
ExaGrid - Joint development between Veeam and ExaGrid R&D enables the Veeam Data Movers to run directly on the ExaGrid appliance, resulting in improved backup performance due to enabling local access to backup files. Note that integration must be configured in the ExaGrid management UI before registering ExaGrid appliance with Veeam. Additionally, backup jobs will now automatically change the default settings to one recommended by ExaGrid when pointed at the ExaGrid-backed repository.
HP StoreOnce - Backup jobs will now automatically change the default settings to those recommended by HP when pointed at a StoreOnce-backed repository. The integration does NOT include HP Catalyst support. (We are working on it though!)
AD-HOC BACKUPS:
Quick Backup - Enables fast, incremental backups of one or more selected VMs. Quick Backup looks up the job to which the selected VM belongs, and runs incremental backup for the selected VM only. If multiple jobs exist for the same VM, the one with most recent restore point will be used to ensure
smallest incremental backup and fastest backup. Restore points produced by Quick Backup do not affect overall job retention; they are “glued” to the previous restore point produced by a standard job run, and are removed during regular job retention processing.
VeeamZIP auto retention - VeeamZIP now includes optional retention on produced backup files. When enabled, created backup files will be utomatically deleted after the specified amount of time. vSphere Web Client integration. Both Quick Backup and VeeamZIP are now available directly from
the vSphere Web Client, placing excellent alternatives to classic VM napshots at your fingertips.
BACKUP COPY JOBS:
Backup Copy suspend - A Backup Copy job is now suspended when source backup files are locked by another job or process, such as a restore or full backup file transformation, instead of just failing
Backup mapping - In addition to full backup, you can now map Backup Copy jobs to any existing backup chain, as long as it does not contain reversed incremental (VRB) files. This dramatically simplifies Backup Copy seeding, and makes it possible to repoint Backup Copy jobs after moving backup files to another storage target.
Backup Copy as a source - Backup Copy can now use backups produced by another Backup Copy job as a source. While the Backup Copy job itself cannot be the source due to its continuously running nature with no stop event, you can point the “child” Backup Copy to a backup repository used by the parent” Backup Copy job to store backups in, to achieve the desired result.
Backup repository throttling - Backup Copy jobs now respect the I/O throttling rule on the source backup repository. For example, if more than one Backup Copy job reads from repository with I/O throttling enabled, all Backup Copy jobs will split the allowed bandwidth equally.
Forward lookup - Backup Copy jobs can now be configured to wait for the new restore point to be created by a primary backup job, instead of using the latest non-copied restore point already available. To enable the new behavior, create the BackupCopyLookForwardDWORD) = 1 registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key.
CONFIGURATION BACKUP:
Cross-version configuration restore - Configuration restore now supports restore of configuration backups created by any product version supported for upgrade to the given product version. In case of v8, this means support of configuration backups created by versions 6.5, 7.0 and 8.0.
Encryption - Configuration backups can now be encrypted. When encryption is enabled, configuration backup will include all credentials, which in turn accelerates the configuration recovery process.
Tape catalog backup - Configuration backup now catalogs all tapes written by File to Tape and Backup to Tape jobs. This significantly reduces backup server recovery times, as re-cataloging all tapes can take significant time to complete.
Session history backup - Configuration backup now includes all job session history, including restore operator activity.
New restore wizard - Configuration restore has been streamlined with the new restore wizard, allowing users to choose between two distinct restore scenarios: regular configuration restore and backup server migration.
Flexible restore options - Configuration restore now supports restoring only certain parts of product configurations (i.e., only backup infrastructure, only jobs configurations and restore points catalog or only session history).
Flexible scheduling options - Configuration backup now provides more flexible scheduling options, similar to what is available for regular jobs.
Additional notification options - Configuration backup jobs now provide SNMP and email notifications to global notification recipients.
SUREBACKUP:
Enhanced SQL Server script - The pre-defined Microsoft SQL Server script has been replaced with a more advanced script that checks each database’s availability, instead of just SQL Server service availability
BIOS UUID removal - SureBackup jobs can now automatically remove BIOS UUID from VMX file of tested VMs to prevent problems with VMware SRM and similar tools that track VMs using this parameter. To enable UUID removal, create the RemoveBiosUuid DWORD) = 1 registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication\SureBackup key.
USER INTERFACE:
Guest account testing - Guest accounts used for application-aware processing and guest file system indexing can now be automatically tested on the corresponding job wizard step. Testing is performed building the list of all VMs added to the job, and attempting to connect to each guest using the
provided guest credentials settings (including any overrides in the advanced guest credentials settings dialog).
Job-level email notifications - Email notification settings can now be configured on the job level. Job-level notification can include a custom set of recipients and be triggered by different status than global notifications.
Save as Default - The advanced job settings pages now provide the ability to save the current settings as defaults to simplify the configuration of future jobs. Note that clicking Save as Default saves the settings of the currently displayed dialog page only.
VM snapshot removal progress - The VM snapshot removal progress percentage is now included in the job statistics to provide users with a better idea of how much longer the process will take.
Password peeker - Password peeker control is now included everywhere where passwords need to be supplied to save users from typing the same password twice for input verification purposes.
Minute-based periodic job start time - Start times within an hour can now be set for minute-based periodic jobs in addition to hourly jobs.
Monthly job schedule improvement - Monthly jobs can now be configured to run on a particular day of the month (e.g., 1st or 31st), in addition to the first or last day of the week of a month.
Job abort reasons - The exact reason for job stopping is now displayed in the job’s session when it is stopped by a user (username is included), another job (name of the job is included) or when it runs over the forced backup window.
Job size calculation improvements - The total VM size now takes into account excluded disk sizes. (We are sorry it took us a while to fix this one!)
TCP/IP thread control - The number of concurrent TCP/IP connections can now be set in the UI on the Network Traffic Rules dialog, as opposed to being a registry value. Increasing the value helps to saturate high latency links, but setting it too high may increase backup proxy CPU usage significantly
as well as affect reliability due to intermediary network equipment isbehaving under heavy load.
Session type display - Session window caption and session list views now show the job session type i.e., full, active full, synthetic full, incremental or reversed incremental).
Disk exclusion improvements - IDE and SATA disks exclusions can now be configured.
Multi-select support - Multi-select is now supported in the advanced application-aware processing and Guest OS Credentials dialogs.
Guest OS details - Guest OS details are now displayed in the Virtual Machines view as an additional column.
Capacity details - Backup repository capacity is now displayed in the Backup Repositories view.
Session report sort order - By popular demand, the sort order for the multiple jobs session report was changed to display the latest session at the top.
Hide unneeded tabs - The ability to hide unneeded tabs in the management tree has been added. For example, you can now hide the Storage Infrastructure and Tape Infrastructure tabs completely if you don’t have supported primary storage and don’t use tape.
New repository type - The backup repository wizard now allows adding backup repositories backed by deduplicating storage through the corresponding designated option. This option lets you can choose between deduplication appliances featuring appliance-specific integration with Veeam Backup
Replication, as described earlier.
Backup Copy jobs with an empty source - You can now create Backup Copy jobs with an empty source to be used as the secondary destination job later when configuring primary backup jobs. This helps to streamlines job configuration in large environments.
Hide splash screen - The ability to hide the splash screen has been added based on requests from terminal users experiencing color display issues as well as users wishing to hide name and email address information of the product’s licensee. To hide the splash screen, create the ShowSplashScreen DWORD) = 0 registry value under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Veeam\Veeam Backup and Replication key.
VEEAM BACKUP ENTERPRISE MANAGER WEB UI:
1-Click Linux file restore - Enables 1-Click file restores from Linux guests. Just like with Windows guests, this functionality requires guest file system indexing to be enabled in the backup job settings.
Failover initiation - Enables VM failover from the web UI using Failover Plans. Delegated users can only initiate failover if they have full VM restore permission for all VMs included in the Failover Plan they choose.
Self-dismissing full VM restore warning - Initiating full VM restore will first show the warning explaining that the original VM will be deleted. The warning will dismiss itself and the full VM restore will proceed if the user provides no input within 20 seconds, so as to not impact any existing web UI integration logic.
Backup to Tape jobs display - Backup to Tape jobs can now be monitored with the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web UI.
Job disable - Disabling jobs is now supported with the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web UI.
New design - The Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager web UI has been refreshed to have a more modern look. (We hope you like it!)
POWERSHELL API:
Multi-OS IFLR - By popular demand, multi-OS IFLR can now be managed through the newly added PowerShell cmdlet.
Improved cmdlet architecture - All-new v8 cmdlets, as well as some existing cmdlets, have been implemented using the new architecture to allow access to certain internal objects without “dirty hacks.” This should help to ensure compatibility of newly developed scripts referring to internal objects with future Veeam Backup & Replication versions.
RESTFUL API:
Veeam Cloud Connect support - RESTful API has been extended with the ability to manage Veeam Cloud Connect infrastructure and tenants.
Multiple enhancements - We’ve added many improvements and enhancements based on feedback from real-world implementations. (Special thanks go to iland web portal developers.)
SETUP:
Streamlined setup - The setup wizard has been streamlined to enable the installation of Veeam Backup Replication in default configuration with fewer clicks. This includes support for running system services under LOCAL YSTEM (new v8 installations only). Setup will now also automatically detect and use the volume with most free disk space for the default backup repository and guest file system catalog location, as opposed to defaulting to the C: drive.
Automatic upgrade - The new VBR_AUTO_UPGRADE="YES" unattended setup option has been added. When enabled, the setup wizard initiates all Veeam components to upgrade automatically and make truly unattended upgrade a possibility for environments with dozens of backup servers.
SQL Server 2012 Express - Veeam Backup & Replication v8 ships with Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express Edition as the default local database option. Remote SQL Server databases and other SQL Server versions are still supported as before.
TOOLS AND UTILITIES;
Configuration database management wizard - The new wizard has been added to allow users to easily update database connection settings (i.e., database name, authentication type, account or password).
Backup Validator enhancements - To simplify scripting, Veeam Backup Validator no longer requires verified backup files to be imported into the backup server and can be pointed at standalone backup files (e.g., VBM, VLB, VBK+VBIs chain, VBK+VRBs chain). Encrypted backups are also supported, but require backup passwords to be present in the Password Manager of the corresponding backup server. Additionally, Veeam Backup Validator can now create nicely formatted HTML reports at the specified
location that contain backup verification results and details.

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 7.0.0.690 (Aug 19, 2013)

2 disruptive innovations:
At Veeam, we take things like WAN acceleration, deduplication, replication, and
Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint recovery that many consider add-ons
or standalone products, and we deliver them as integrated features. We remove
limitations other vendors have accepted, like unrecoverable backups, long restore
times, and backup and recovery agents. We do all this to eliminate barriers and
offer technology that is powerful, easy-to-use and affordable.
Built-in WAN Acceleration:
Offsite storage of backups is a critical component of a good data protection strategy,
and in v7, Veeam makes offsite storage easy with Built-in WAN Acceleration. Caching,
variable block length data fingerprinting and TCP/IP protocol optimizations result in
up to 50 times faster transfers of Veeam backups across the WAN while eliminating
the need for additional backup jobs, copy scripts and capabilities like storage-based
replication. Best of all, there are no VM- or host-based agents to install and no special
network setup required.
High performance Backup from Storage Snapshots:
Continuing what we started with the introduction of Veeam Explorer for Storage
Snapshots in version 6.5, Veeam Backup & Replication v7 takes advantage of SAN
snapshots again to offer new capabilities for powerful data protection. Exclusive
innovations, including direct VMFS access and the ability to leverage VMware
Changed Block Tracking, enable instant VMware snapshot commit and let you
create backups and replicas from storage snapshots as often as you like and
whenever you like. The result is dramatically improved RPOs for near-CDP that
doesn’t impact your production environment or running VMs.
This VMware-only feature currently supports HP StoreVirtual VSA, HP StoreVirtual
and HP StoreServ storage product lines.
Native tape support:
Many organizations have invested in tape and are subject to policies requiring tape. Veeam Backup & Replication v7 offers you an easy way to copy files and backups on tape, with support for virtual tape libraries (VTLs), tape libraries and standalone drives. Files, VMs and restore points are tracked on tape, enabling you to easily locate items and making restores easy.
Virtual Lab for replicas:
Reduce risk and put your replicas to work with Virtual Lab for replicas. With new SureReplica, you can automatically verify every restore point in every replica. You can also turn your standby replicas and DR infrastructure into valuable resources for item-level recovery with U-AIR (Universal Application-Item Recovery) and isolated environments for testing, training and troubleshooting with On-Demand Sandbox.
Enhanced backup and recovery for vCloud Director:
Support for vCloud Director (vCD) goes deep with integrated visibility of the vCD infrastructure in the backup console and backups that include the metadata and attributes associated with vApps and VMs. Recovery enables restore of vApps and VMs directly back to vCD, and even includes support for fast provisioning.
vSphere Web Client plug-in:
Monitor your backup infrastructure directly from the vSphere Web Client, VMware’s next-generation administrative interface for vSphere. The plug-in delivers at-a-glance and detailed views of job status and backup resources, alerts you of potential backup issues, and also simplifies capacity planning and identification of unprotected VMs.
Virtual Lab for Hyper-V:
Veeam Backup & Replication v7 brings SureBackup®, U-AIR and On-Demand Sandbox to Hyper-V. SureBackup eliminates risk by automatically verifying the recoverability of your backups, while U-AIR enables quick, agentless recovery of objects from any virtualized application and On-Demand Sandbox creates isolated environments for testing, troubleshooting and training.
Enhanced 1-Click Restore with self-service recovery:
1-Click Restore in the Enterprise Manager web UI now offers the ability to restore entire VMs, and powerful new delegation options let you safely put restore tasks in the hands of business users. This results in faster recovery times and decreased burden on IT staff.
Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint:
Offering instant visibility, advanced search capabilities and quick recovery of individual items in SharePoint databases, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SharePoint saves you time and effort. With built-in e-discovery and agentless recovery, you now have an affordable tool for browsing, searching, and selectively recovering SharePoint items from Veeam backups and replicas.
75+ additional enhancements:
As a result of ongoing research and development effort and in response to customer feedback, v7 includes an extensive range of additional features and enhancements, the most significant of which are listed below.
Backup Copy jobs:
Veeam Backup & Replication v7 gives you the ability to efficiently create copies of backups in local and remote backup repositories, making it easy for you to satisfy the recommended best practice of keeping multiple copies of backups on different media. Backup Copy jobs also facilitate implementation of a cost-effective, tiered backup storage strategy.
Backup Copy jobs can be set up for selected VMs from one or more Veeam backups, and each job can beconfigured with its own independent retention policy. Additional optional capabilities include:
Grandfather-father-son (GFS) policy:
This data retention feature helps you meet data archival
requirements by copying and storing full VM backups for specified intervals of time.
Automated backup health check and remediation:
Backup files are periodically scanned to identify storage issues, such as bit rot. Automatic healing fixes corrupt data blocks by retrieving correct data from the source backup file, increasing the reliability of forever-incremental backup copies and removing the need for periodic full backups.
Backup file compaction:
Decrease the size of your backup files by automatically recreating them based on current data, which lets you remove the data associated with deleted VMs without having to perform an active full backup. This prevents unnecessary growth over time of your full backup files as VMs are added to and removed from jobs.
Engine:
Parallel processing of multiple VMs:
Enables better utilization and saturation of your storage infrastructure, eliminates dead time between backups and improves overall backup performance.
Parallel processing of virtual disks within VMs:
Significantly improves backup performance for VMs with multiple large disks and reduces the amount of time a VM runs off its snapshot, thus helping to reduce snapshot commit times.
Resume on disconnect:
Data movers are now capable of transparently resuming communication after a network connection drops completely for a short period of time. This capability dramatically improves the reliability of remote backup and replication.
Hardware-accelerated compression:
A new default compression level with a proprietary algorithm implementation leverages advanced CPU instruction sets (SSE extensions). This reduces backup proxy CPU usage up to 10 times when compared to the previous default compression level.
64-bit data movers:
Backup repositories can now support appreciably larger backups. Please note versions of Windows prior to Microsoft Windows 2012 have a 16TB limit for maximum NTFS file size. This limit roughly equates to a maximum of 25TB of source data per backup job.
Backup repository overload protection:
When a backup repository’s storage is overloaded with regard to I/O capacity, new tasks are not assigned to that backup repository even if task slots are available.
Reduced memory consumption:
Memory consumption optimization allows 32-bit data movers to support larger backups.
Enhanced I/O pattern for data writes:
Decreased fragmentation within backups files results in improved backup and restore performance, as well as reduced degradation from full backup file transformations over time.
Automatic termination of deduplication:
When full backup files significantly exceed the maximum size recommended by Veeam Backup & Replication, deduplication is automatically disabled for those specific backup files. This measure is intended to increase the reliability of deployments that perhaps
were not carefully planned or are not optimally configured.
Graceful job stop:
Attempt to cleanly shut down all jobs when the Veeam Backup & Replication service is stopped (either manually or as a result of a computer shutdown).
Decreased disruption from host activity:
Activities such as upgrading or reattaching hypervisor hosts are now less disruptive to Veeam Backup & Replication jobs.
VMware vSphere:
Intelligent disk-level load balancing:
Virtual disks are now assigned to the most suitable backup proxy, rather than assigning all disks for a given VM to the same backup proxy.
Transparent backup of vCenter Server VM:
The vCenter Server VM can now be backed up without having to resort to workarounds, such as adding the vCenter Server’s host by IP address and then
configuring a separate job for it.
Concurrent snapshots commit operations:
The maximum number of concurrent operations is now automatically limited to a preconfigured value (per standalone host or cluster). This reduces the impact of snapshot commits on your production environment. Maximum values are configured via updates to corresponding registry values.
Replica resume:
Rather than replicating restore point data for all virtual disks again, the retry cycle for
a replication job now reuses restore point data for virtual disks that were fully replicated to the replica VM before the job interruption occurred.
Changed Block Tracking:
Changed Block Tracking can now be enabled for VMs that already have snapshots.
Enumerated infrastructure objects:
Performance is improved when enumerating infrastructure objects in large vSphere deployments.
VeeamZIP performance:
VeeamZIP performance is improved significantly for VMs with virtual disks containing large amounts of empty space.
Microsoft Hyper-V:
Improved intelligent load-balancing:
When using a VSS Software Provider and CSV 2.0 (Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or later), intelligent load balancing selects the backup proxy based on the CSV owner, resulting in significantly improved backup performance.
Clustered disks:
Volumes residing on clustered disks are supported by changed block tracking.
Instant File-Level Recovery for other file systems:
Wizard-driven file-level recovery for 15 file systems is now available for Hyper-V backups.
Maximum concurrent snapshots per volume:
This setting can now be configured separately in the Hyper-V host properties for each volume. Caution should be exercised because higher values may introduce intermittent backup failures due to Microsoft VSS behavior peculiarities.
Instant VM recovery initialization:
Instant VM Recovery is now up to 3 times quicker due to a faster disk preallocation process.
ODX-enabled storage:
ODX-enabled storage is now fully supported, and ODX is no longer disabled on hosts after installing Veeam Backup & Replication Hyper-V integration components.
Saved state avoidance:
For VSS-aware operating systems, VSS processing is now retried after timeout when Hyper-V Integration Tools report that a VM can be processed only via saved state. This
occasionally happens on busy systems, and the retry significantly reduces the likelihood that backup activities will suspend the VM.
Hyper-V Integration Tools version monitoring:
Jobs now detect and log an information event when a VM’s Hyper-V Integration Tools are out of date.
Updating Veeam Backup & Replication Hyper-V integration components:
A reboot of the Hyper-V host is no longer required after updating or patching Hyper-V integration components.
Windows file-level recovery:
Length restriction removed for restore file path:
The restore file path is no longer limited to 240 characters.
Mount point drive preservation:
The drive letter for mount points is now preserved by the Veeam Backup Browser. This is particularly helpful when users running Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange want to access Exchange mailbox databases stored on mount points.
Faster performance when restoring many small files:
Restores are now up to 50 times faster for network-less restore modes.
File-level recovery UI is no longer modal:
You may now access other Veeam Backup & Replication interfaces while concurrently performing file-level recovery operations.
Other OS file-level recovery:
Faster performance when restoring many small files:
Restores are now up to 50 times faster for oth network-based and network-less restore modes.
NSS (Novell Storage Services):
File-level recovery for NSS is now supported from VMware backups.
Veam Explorer for Microsoft Exchange:
Mcrosoft Exchange 2013:
Support for Microsoft Exchange 2013 is now available.
Rstore to original location:
Redesigned restores to original location are now faster and more reliable.
Restore to Office 365:
Experimental support is available for restoring mailbox items to Microsoft Office
365.
Backup file validation:
To detect storage-level issues, such as bit rot, a new option is available for alidating all data blocks belonging to the backup files with restore points being tested by SureBackup.
Virtual Lab internet access configuration:
The Virtual Lab configuration settings for internet access are now available directly within the Virtual Lab wizard, removing the need to update registry values.
Windows UI:
Credentials Manager:
All accounts used throughout Veeam Backup & Replication can be managed
through one central dialog, allowing account passwords to be easily updated when they change.
1-Click job cloning:
Jobs can be cloned with a single click. New jobs are initially disabled, giving you the flexibility to activate them when you are ready.
Enhanced job grid view:
Real-time statistics are integrated into the job grid view for quicker access to particular job details.
Read and transferred graphs:
New graphs have been added to views of real-time statistics, and by simply clicking on the graphs, you can switch between views of the previous five minutes and the entire session.
VM console:
You can now open the VM console of VMs started by Instant VM Recovery directly from
the Veeam Backup & Replication UI.
Add to job enhancements:
In addition to being available for VMs, the “Add to job” shortcut is now available for all objects in an infrastructure tree, as well as for files and folders being added to File Copy
jobs.
Deduplication and compression ratio:
The backup properties UI now expresses the ratios in magnitude (i.e. “times”) instead of potentially confusing percent values.
Additional license information:
The total count of protected VMs is displayed in the license information dialog, enabling Veeam Cloud Providers to easily audit compliance with per-VM licensing agreements.
Support expiration warnings:
Expiration warnings now appear throughout the product and in job email notifications, making users aware of expired support contracts. These warnings can be disabled, if desired.
Performance improvements:
The amount of interaction with the configuration database has been reduced, significantly improving UI responsiveness.
Support ID:
Your support ID is now displayed directly in the license information UI for assistance and convenience when opening support cases.
Enterprise Manager:
RESTful API:
All Enterprise Manager functionality is now available through the RESTful API, enabling
integration with existing web portals and other web applications.
1-Click Failover:
Enterprise Manager now provides an easy-to-use interface for performing failover of individual VMs.
1-Click Restore of VMs:
In addition to 1-Click Restore of individual guest files, you can now perform full restores of individual VMs.
1-Click Restore web page:
The user interface for restoring files is updated and streamlined for better usability.
Restore Operator restrictions:
File download and extension restrictions are no longer global settings and are now set instead on individual restore operators.
Credentials Manager:
The Credentials Manager can now be leveraged when editing jobs.
Automatic failover for Microsoft Search Server:
Built-in search capabilities are now available to transparently handle searches affected by integration failures with Microsoft Search Server.
Real-time data collection:
Instead of periodic data collection, Enterprise Manager subscribes to backup server notifications that let it retrieve new data as soon as it becomes available. This allows
Enterprise Manager to display the most up-to-date job state at any time.
Session retention period:
The retention period is now set in weeks, instead of months, to allow for more granular retention.
Portal customization:
A special band image that appears at the top of Enterprise Manager pages can be customized with a company-specific logo and other items.
Enhanced UI:
New and improved page design and UI components enhance Enterprise Manager appearance.
Storage integration:
HP StoreServ (3PAR):
HP StoreServ is now supported by Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots (Fibre Channel connectivity only).
HP StoreVirtual VSA:
Versions 10 and 10.5 are now supported by Veeam Explorer for Storage Snapshots.
HP StoreVirtual registration:
The registration process has been revamped to avoid timeouts with large infrastructures.
Plug-in architecture:
A new storage plug-in architecture is now in place to simplify the process of adding support for other storage vendors and models in future releases. This architecture is not meant to be leveraged by storage vendors directly; rather, implementation will be performed by Veeam.
Setup:
Silent setup:
Silent installation is now supported for the Veeam Backup & Replication server and Enterprise Manager.
ISO file:
Veeam Backup & Replication is now distributed as an ISO file, simplifying installation in virtual environments.
Prerequisites validation:
A wizard runs during setup to validate that all prerequisites are met before installing Veeam Backup & Replication.
Logging:
Export logs wizard:
The wizard offers new filters that let you create smaller log packages targeted more specifically to problematic areas. This can substantially reduce upload time for logs when troubleshooting issues with Veeam support.
Job logs storage:
For additional convenience, job logs are now stored in per-job folders.
Other:
Root passwords:
Root passwords can now be configured for helper appliances.
Extract utility UI:
The utility now offers a standalone Windows UI; the command line utility is still available for more experienced users.
New license key format:
The license key now includes your support ID. Also, the license information for multiple products can now be included within a single license file.
New PowerShell cmdlets:
Support has been added for new v7 functionality, and a number of enhancements have been made to the existing cmdlets. Backward compatibility has been maintained.

New in Veeam Backup & Replication 2.0 (Jul 31, 2008)

Five times faster
Veeam Backup 2.0 features a new optimized backup engine, which allows for up to five times faster back up and replication performance compared to the previous version.
Windows VSS support
No more need for additional crash-consistent backups of your Windows application servers! Veeam Backup 2.0 leverages Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure consistent backups of the applications within your virtual machines. Domain controllers, Exchange servers and SQL servers are fully supported with this release.
ESXi support
Veeam Backup 2.0 features limited support for ESXi servers through VCB. You can now back up ESXi servers using the VCB option in the backup wizard. File-level recovery is fully supported for guests running on ESXi, while full image restore is only supported to ESX 3.x servers. Once the guest has been restored to an ESX 3.x server, you can then VMotion the restored machine back to the ESXi server. Replication is also supported with ESXi as a source and ESX 3.x as a target.
Enhanced reporting and notification
Ever wondered what your backup job is doing? Veeam Backup 2.0 features comprehensive real-time job statistics (start/end time, performance metrics) as well as current job activity description so you always know exactly what�s happening.
New e-mail reporting in Veeam Backup 2.0 will email you the jobs summary based on result (successful, failed or all) in the form of an HTML report.
Backup portability
Veeam Backup 2.0 allows you to import backup files made by another installation of Veeam Backup or from backups that have been archived to tape or offsite. You can now exchange backup images between sites and offices and be confident that your offsite archives of Veeam Backup will be easily ecoverable in the future. You can even import backup sets made with previous versions of Veeam Backup.
Support for 3rd party tape backup
You can now integrate your existing tape backup infrastructure with Veeam Backup. A new UI control allows you to specify script to automatically run when a backup is finished.
You can use the script to initiate a tape backup every time, or at whatever interval you choose. Combined with the new backup portability this will allow you to easily archive your backups offsite.